Кейт Мур - Felix The Railway Cat

Gizmo was an enormous cat, mostly white but with a black head (though white face) and black back. Lexi was half his size. Though he’d been taken in for mousing, he was absolutely idle – so laid back, he was laid down – and daft as a brush. He was a huge, fluffy cat who was patient and kind.

When the cats had first arrived, given they were rescue moggies, the Briscoes hadn’t known how old they were. They set about getting them inoculated and had taken them into the vet’s to discuss getting them neutered and spayed respectively, as they didn’t want any unexpected litters. The vet had looked up from his examination of Lexi and told them somewhat bluntly, ‘You’re too late.’

Sixty-odd days later, here they were with five gorgeous little kittens.

As the kittens were surprise arrivals, Chris now set about putting the word out that there were five kittens going spare, who needed rehoming once they were old enough to be separated from their mum. Joanne Briscoe also worked for TPE, as a customer host, so both she and Chris tried to spread the message far and wide on the railway network. Their son said he would take one of the tabby cats, and then a train dispatcher from Manchester got in touch to say she’d like the other two tabbies. Only the black-and-white pair were now without a new home to go to.

But they were making themselves rather comfortable in the one they currently had. Over the next ten days, one by one, the kittens slowly opened their eyes. At that age, kittens’ eyes are always blue, so first one pair of cerulean peepers, then another, and then another, stretched open and took in the sight of the world for the very first time. But one of the black-and-white kittens – the one who was fluffier than her two-tone twin, which was the only way to tell them apart – took her time. She was the very last of the litter to blink open her bright blue eyes – but once she did there was no stopping her.

Almost overnight, or so it seemed to Chris and Joanne, the basket of kittens was transformed from a blind and helpless mass into five courageous and mischievous individuals, who set out to cause chaos wherever they went. They were so playful! The kittens chased each other all over the house: scarpering up the curtains, hiding in the washing basket, pinching the socks drying on the radiators and treating them like prey. Nothing could be left unattended for a moment or it would be turned into a new game. The kittens had the run of the house and they made good use of it – they darted and tumbled and skidded all over the place, a five-headed ball of kitten mayhem that had suddenly rolled into town like a funfair.

A favourite game of the quintet was to terrorise their dad, Gizmo. He was such a placid cat that the kittens found they could romp all over their father and he’d let them do whatever they wanted. Eventually, after half an hour or so, he’d have had enough, and would gently ease them all off him and slink out of their way, but he never once chastised them.

Mum, however, was a different matter. All five kittens would jump all over her, just as kittens do, chasing each other and leaping athletically over their mother – a great game – but when Lexi had had enough, she’d give her children a backhander or grab them by the scruff of their necks to tell them: ‘Enough. Stop now.’ She was a loving cat, but she was also a very ‘do-as-you’re-told’ type of mother, and the kittens learned to stay in line. They learned other things from her, too. When the time came, Lexi – who was an absolutely spotless cat when it came to hygiene – showed them how to use a litter tray so well that all five kittens became impeccably house-trained.

As time passed, the kittens stopped suckling from Lexi and the Briscoes moved them on to the recommended diet of raw mince mixed with egg. They didn’t want to use the shop-bought kitten food that some did; nothing but the best for these kittens born on Egyptian cotton towels! Instead, they were weaned on the freshest, highest-quality mince, with raw egg hand-beaten into it. Food of champions.

One of the tabby kittens – the one who became known as Spadge, and who would eventually go to live with the Briscoes’ son – certainly agreed with that sentiment. He asserted himself early on and would always be the first at the food; in the Briscoes’ own words, ‘He was a greedy little oik.’ Amid the loud protestations of his mewing siblings, he decided he was getting in first and nobody else could have a look-in until he was finished.

The kittens were a noisy, confident, outgoing bunch. They miaowed when they wanted their dinner and Spadge was in the way, but they also mewed when they were playing, and had been known to let out a chorus of squeals during spirited boxing matches with one another. At night, when they were fast asleep after dinner, wiped out by their mega-exciting day, there were always a lot of soft little purrs coming from the velour brown-and-white cat bed where the siblings all slept.

In addition to Spadge revealing that he was ‘the greedy one’, the kittens asserted their individual personalities in other ways, too. The black-and-white duo became known as the terrible twins, for a favourite game of theirs was to latch on to Chris’s trousers while he was having a quiet sit-down, just like two furry pin badges. The kittens would make themselves quiet and still, so that Chris had no idea they were there. Then, when he stood up to make his way upstairs, he’d suddenly find that he had ten (or twenty) claws stuck into his legs as the cats clung resolutely to his trousers. Those super-sharp claws would scrape his skin when he moved. ‘What the hell is that?’ he’d cry, feeling them scratch, and one black-and-white kitten or another would cheekily cock its head to one side, enjoying the drama of his roars of pain and the oh-so-sweet sensation of being carried through the air on his trousers. They climbed up his legs all the time. So, after only a few weeks, Chris was walking around looking as though he’d made it a new favourite habit to clamber through viciously spiked brambles on a daily basis.

He redoubled his efforts to find permanent homes for the terrible twins. And here, at last, he heard on the railway network that Angie Hunte had been putting out a message of her own: Huddersfield station wanted to employ a station cat. Did anyone know of any kittens who might be up to the job?

It was important to Angie and the team that it was a kitten who joined them. It wouldn’t have been fair to an older, former house cat to throw it in at the deep end in a working environment, what with the danger of the trains and the noise and bustle of a busy station. Huddersfield hosted approximately 5 million customer journeys each year, with fifteen trains per hour, which placed it in the top 100 busiest stations in the country. You couldn’t teach an old cat the kind of new tricks that a railway cat would need to learn, but if a kitten grew up there it would learn on the job how to be a station cat.

Angie and Chris soon met up to talk all things kitten. At that time Chris was often at Huddersfield for work, so a meeting was easy enough to arrange.

Angie greeted him with one of her classic beaming smiles. ‘So, we’re looking to decrease our pest control bill,’ she said, eyes sparkling with good humour, ‘go a bit greener and employ a kitten instead. I hear you might be able to help – how much are you wanting for them?’

‘Oh, I’m not wanting anything for them,’ Chris replied quickly. Thinking of the scratches on his legs, in the nicest possible way he was going to be rather pleased to be shot of the kittens. To know that he wasn’t going to be stuck with at least one of the terrible twins was great news. In addition, given the network nature of the railway, he thought there was also a bit of kudos in the fact that it was going to be his cat that would be the Huddersfield station cat; that he would be its granddaddy. He would never live that one down.